1 Penny

These copper pennies were not issued by any colonial authority — they were privately struck tokens commissioned by local merchants to address a chronic shortage of small change in Barbados. The British government had largely neglected to supply the Caribbean colonies with adequate subsidiary coinage, leaving trade at the retail level dependent on whatever private or foreign pieces happened to circulate. The Lyall reference places this among a well-documented series of Caribbean merchant tokens, though the specific commissioning party behind this issue remains disputed in the literature.